


A,B,C...

by snapeislife (Horsy495)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blind Snape, Rating May Change, Tags May Change, deaf snape, may or may not be completed, mute snape, severus snape survives nagini
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 01:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16844395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Horsy495/pseuds/snapeislife
Summary: Written for @snapeloveposts (from Tumblr) Writing and Drawing Fest 2018Prompt:Snape was blind, mute, and deaf after the war (due to Nagini's venom). He stayed in the special ward of the St. Mungo's and not many people had accessed to the place. His only visitor was a healer who did not bother to interact with him at all. Then, a young volunteer who participated in the new program of St. Mungo's came. She was interested in his case and tried to interact with the man.





	1. The Damage

It came as a shock to find that the mangled body in fact still held life within it. It took quite a few Healers, and then some, to attempt to put the broken pieces back together. One Healer had quietly suggested that perhaps it was kinder to let the poor soul finally rest. But Harry was adamant. He’d lost so many people, friends, his only family. He couldn’t bare to lose another, not when there was the barest, slimmest chance that the man could still be saved.

Harry fought tooth and nail, using his newfound leverage as the “saviour of the wizarding world” to do everything in his power to bring the tattered spy back to the land of the living.

He didn’t once pause to consider that maybe the Healer had been right, because that would mean it was all his fault that one more life was lost.

He even managed to clear his name, so that once the man awoke he wouldn’t be immediately carted off to Azkaban.

And wake up he did, one unusually warm autumn day, a few months after the war had been won.

Harry wasn’t there when he opened his eyes, being too wrapped up in Auror training, but the minute Harry heard, he immediately dropped everything and Apparated to St. Mungo’s.

He excitedly entered the room, filled to the brim with a heady sense of accomplishment that he had done the impossible, and saved the life of Severus Snape. Finally Harry felt as if he was paying back Snape for all the times the man had saved his.

~~~~~~~~~~**********~~~~~~~~~~

It was quiet. Too quiet.

Severus Snape slowly opened his eyes. It was also extremely dark.

Too dark to make out shapes or forms in the pressing darkness around him.

He breathed in deeply through his nose. The cold, antiseptic air told him he was most probably in St. Mungo’s. How, he had no idea.

He had purposely left the healing potions he always kept in a deep pocket of his robes untouched. He had completed his mission, and had been more than happy to finally leave this cruel, hateful world behind.

Unless this was the afterlife, but somehow he just knew that it was not.

The ache in his neck was too strong, the smells too familiar, and the bone-deep fatigue too real.

Minuscule vibrations through the rather uncomfortable mattress alerted him to the presence of another human being in the room that seemed to be heading in his direction.

He sat up quickly, immediately regretting it when his stomach gave a rebellious lurch.

“Who’s there?!” he tried to shout, but no sound issued from his throat.

The vibrations stopped abruptly.

Severus ran his fingers over his smarting neck. There was a sizable scar there, and it wasn’t just the size of a huge snake bite. It spread out in thin ribbons, clambering up his jaw and even reaching down to his collar bone. He became aware of a rather jarring fact.

He had been rendered mute through his injury.

Something suddenly brushed his knuckles, and he started so badly he nearly toppled off the bed.

Another something grabbed his shoulder to steady him, and he realized it was a person touching him.

His heart rate sped up.

He had no idea if the war had been won, or if the Dark Lord had even been defeated. He hoped that was the case, but he didn’t trust anyone who tried to touch him in a pitch black room.

It then occurred to him that the person who had touched him had made absolutely no sound.

A terrible suspicion wormed its way into his thoughts.

What if the room wasn’t dark at all? Perhaps that pleasant warmth draping across his right shoulder was glaring sunlight.

The vibrations returned, and he became aware of a somehow oddly familiar presence coming to a stop on his right, blocking the warmth.

Someone took his hand, and this time he didn’t flinch away. His mind was still trying to process the increasingly obvious signs that Nagini had not only stolen his voice, but his eyes and ears as well.

The person holding his hand lifted it slowly to what felt like their forehead. Severus couldn’t imagine why, until he felt the shape of an all-too-familiar scar beneath his fingertips, and then the cool metal of those blasted round glasses.

The gesture confirmed beyond a doubt that his eyes and ears were functioning as well as his throat.

But with that painful realization also came a startling, though thankfully not as unpleasant knowledge.

Harry Potter, the unbearably lucky nuisance that he was, was somehow alive.

_WE WON!!!_

The thought was so loud that it hurt. Or maybe that was because it was a very clumsy bit of accidental legilimency on his end.

But the truth was there now, in all its beautiful and agonizing glory.

His job was done, he had succeeded, he hadn’t failed Lily.

And yet, his chest felt so tight he could barely breathe.

He hadn’t meant to survive. _He didn’t want it_. Especially not this terrible, terrible dark silence that made him completely useless, if he hadn’t already been so.

He drew his hands up to his face, grasping at his shorn hair, his entire being suddenly flooded with an overwhelming sense of despair.

He barely noticed the tears dripping onto his lap.

He longed to be numb, to feel no pain, to simply cease existing.

It was such a simple wish, one he’d had since he was twenty, and still, still his miserable life persisted.

_I wish I were dead._


	2. The Guilt

Harry watched the breakdown in confusion.

Shouldn’t Snape be happy that they’d won?

Why then was he the picture of abject misery, his white cheeks shining with the deluge of tears cascading from his dark eyes, and his whole body folded in on itself, as if someone had dropped a huge, invisible weight on those ridiculously bony shoulders?

Harry simply couldn’t understand it, until he heard the softest whisper brush through his thoughts, a wandless version of the same spell he’d felt minutes ago.

_I wish I were dead._

Harry didn’t know whether the magic was intentional or accidental, but the five simple words were like a blow to the stomach, leaving him winded.

The Healer in the room seemed to catch his expression, because she said, “Perhaps it’s time for you to leave, sir.”

Harry nodded dumbly and stumbled towards the door.

Just before he walked through it, he turned around and found enough of his voice to plead, “Keep him safe.” On second thought, he quietly added, “From himself.”

The Healer raised her eyebrows, but Harry knew that she’d understood.

“I’ll keep that in mind. He’ll be moved to a more private ward should you wish to visit him again,” she answered, rather sadly.

Harry nodded again, then practically fled from the room.

He left the building in a stupor.

Along the way back home to his apartment that he shared with Ginny, Harry decided there was no point in telling his friends the whole truth.

Upon opening the front door, Harry found himself faced with Ron and Hermione as well as Ginny.

“Oh. Hey.”

“We heard that Snape woke up today! How is he?” Hermione immediately asked, without beating around the bush.

All Harry managed to croak was, “Fine. He’s doing bloody great, thanks to my damned heroics,” before he brushed past them to his bedroom.

Neither of his best friends nor Ginny seemed to know what to make of that.

Harry couldn’t bring himself to see Snape after that. No one else cared enough to drop by, but he couldn’t bring himself to face his former potions master ever again.

He should have known the Healer that had said it would be kinder to just let him die was absolutely right.

~~~~~~~~~~**********~~~~~~~~~~

Healer Carlson generally loved most people unconditionally, especially the patients placed under his care, but there was something about his newest charge that he simply couldn’t stand. His newest charge was an ex-Death Eater, and Carlson had lost his dear wife and daughter to Death Eaters. He knew the story of this guy, the Daily Prophet had had a field day with that one, but that didn’t mean he believed it. He was very wary of the Daily Prophet and he was a little less wary of the supposed “Great” Harry Potter, but he still had a healthy distrust of anything that mentioned his name.

Anyone with that much fame and money was not to be fully trusted.

Besides, if that Potter person really believed in Severus Snape’s innocence so staunchly, then where was he? Why hadn’t he visited the man even once since Snape was moved to this private ward?

It was all very fishy indeed, and if Snape hadn’t been so severely incapacitated by his injuries Carlson would have refused to allow him into the ward at all. As it was, Carlson didn’t allow him access to his wand, or teach him a more convenient means of communication other than basic gestures and a frustrated attempts at charades, because Carlson didn’t think it was safe.

Therefore, he was understandably reluctant to put Snape on the list for patients that needed a full-time volunteer. But Carlson was at his wits end with the man, and it would make his life a lot easier if he had a helper. Particularly a youthful helper with more physical strength than him, seeing as Carlson was not the spry young man he had once been, and Snape seemed determined to hurt himself in increasingly inventive ways when Carlson wasn’t there to stop him.

The day he finally got his volunteer though, he very nearly sent her right back out the door.

She was _tiny_ , barely scraping five feet, and extremely delicate looking. He couldn’t believe the management thought this wee thing could be of any help with a patient like Severus Snape.

But, before he kicked her back to the children’s ward where she certainly belonged, reading fairytales to kids that blew bubbles out of their ears and whatnot, he decided to give her a test run first. If that failed, well then, this time he was going to specify a male that was preferably six feet tall. Or even female. Just someone who didn’t look like one push would make them fall and crack like a porcelain doll.


	3. The Patient

Heather Auberry could tell from the way Healer Octavian Carlson was staring at her that he hadn’t been expecting someone as diminutive as herself. But there was nothing he could do about it, seeing as she was the last spare volunteer the hospital had at the moment. The end of the war had meant a lot of work for St. Mungo’s, and the hospital had been dubious about letting her in as a volunteer in the first place, seeing as she didn’t have the highest marks in her grade, thanks to her hearing disability. The Wizarding World was woefully behind the Muggle world in a lot of things, and one of them happened to be disabled persons. But St. Mungo’s had agreed to take her on because they were that desperate.

Healer Carlson held out a hand awkwardly after about a minute of staring disbelievingly.

“Miss- er-”

“Auberry. Heather Auberry.” Heather shook his hand, pretending not to notice the crease that appeared on his already quite wrinkled forehead. She didn’t have the clearest speech, as her words tended to come out a bit garbled, since she couldn’t hear others speaking too well.

“Ah, I’m Healer Carlson. Welcome. Come with me.”

Once over his initial surprise, Healer Carlson promptly switched into business mode.

“This is the patient lounge, but the patient you are helping me with never goes there, so I doubt you’ll hang around here much, that’s the room for physical therapy and stuff like that, it’s important so remember where it is, this corridor leads to the patients rooms, most have roommates, yours doesn’t because we were quite certain he wouldn’t want one-”

Healer Carlson kept on talking as they walked, checking in every now and then to make sure Heather was listening. Heather was listening very intently. She didn’t want to mess this up. She even asked Healer Carlson to repeat if she wasn’t sure she heard him correctly, because she was determined to get this right.

All the time she wondered vaguely who her patient was going to be. They passed a few on the way to the mystery man’s room. Heather found each of them fascinating.

There was a witch that had smoke curling out of her nostrils and random outbreaks of purple scales on her dark skin, an elderly wizard that seemed quite convinced he was Merlin, and a young man that had a huge, beautiful pair of white wings.

Finally they reached the last room at the end of the hallway. Unlike some of the other rooms, there was no sign on the door indicating who was inside.

Healer Carlson opened the door.

“Heather, meet Severus Snape.”

Heather gawked at the man sitting on a chair near an empty, unmade bed, in a very sparsely furnished room. He had one long leg drawn up to meet his chin, his lanky arms wrapped around it as if it were a life preserver, and there was something off about his eyes.

But that wasn’t what shocked Heather the most. What shocked her most was the fact that she knew him. Well, by now, everyone did, thanks to the Daily Prophet, but she had also been his student. A favorite, if she felt like flattering herself, because Potions had been one of the few classes where her hearing hadn’t been of much importance, seeing as the instructions had always been on the board. That and Professor Snape had a very clear voice, which was easy to understand, especially when she sat in front.

But as she looked at him now, she could barely recognize him. In fact, if Healer Carson hadn’t mentioned his name, she wasn’t sure she would have.

For starters, his hair had been cut very short, and at the moment it was sticking up in every which direction, reminding her of a hedgehog, or perhaps a porcupine was more accurate when describing the prickly professor. She was also quite certain that while he’d always been lean, he hadn’t been this thin. His bones jutted out sharply from beneath the plain hospital pajamas, and his pale face was unusually gaunt, with deep, dark hollows beneath his eyes. The most striking difference was the angry red scar that exploded over his white neck, clambering over his jaw and disappearing under his collar.

“That’s where-” Heather pointed to the scar hesitantly.

“That’s where the snake bit him, yes. His injuries have left him completely mute, blind and deaf. Why they bothered to save him, I have no clue,” explained Healer Carlson, with a shrug.

Heather felt a powerful upsurge of pity. That explained the glassy emptiness of his eyes, and why he had yet to show any sign that he had noticed them at the doorway.

She slowly edged into the room.

Snape lifted his head when she was still a few feet away from him. She knew why, being moderately deaf herself. He could obviously smell her perfume, which she had worn in celebration of finally getting a spot as a volunteer in St. Mungo’s.

He could probably also feel the vibrations of her steps through the wood of his chair.

His eyes narrowed. He was obviously wary of strangers, and she didn’t blame him, if even half of what the Prophet had said was true.

She stopped a small distance away from him, and stood very still, not wanting to startle him with any sudden movement. She couldn’t be sure how secure he was on that chair.

“He was your professor, no?” Healer Carlson asked her. “You’re young enough.”

Heather nodded, still studying Snape. He seemed to sense that someone was watching him, judging by the way he had straightened up, and put his leg back onto the floor, arms now crossed over his chest.

“Does he know some form of sign language so that I can communicate with him?” Heather knew sign language, even though she could hear well enough not to need it. She had learned it in the muggle world, where she’d grown up. She was a bit rusty, but she still remembered the alphabet perfectly, and that would be the best way to communicate with him anyway.

“No,” replied Healer Carlson, rather curtly for some reason.

“What? Then how do you-”

“He knows how to communicate things when he wants them. Don’t worry about it,” snapped Healer Carlson, which immediately made Heather suspicious. “Anyway, I’ve got to go, Snape isn’t my only patient, you know. That’s why I need your help in the first place. He needs someone to watch him while I’m not there to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.”

Heather watched him leave, her mouth set in a determined line.

She knew exactly what she was going to be doing here, and she was going to start it now.


	4. The Kindness

Severus hated absolutely everything about his predicament. He hated his Healer, who he was certain held a personal grudge against him, although he wasn’t sure why exactly, but he knew there were more than enough reasons, he hated being unable to fully take care of himself, but most of all, he hated the boredom.

The Healer obviously didn’t think he deserved any sort of respite from the oppressive darkness and silence that permeated his world, amplifying the contents of his mind until he could barely stand it.

Did he really deserve this? Maybe. Perhaps keeping that ingrate Potter alive hadn’t been enough. Helping the Light conquer the Dark wasn’t enough. He was completely lost in darkness now, which seemed a fitting punishment for succumbing to it all those years ago.

Such was his dismal thought process, when he felt the slightest change in the air pressure of the room that signaled the opening of the door. The Healer was back. Joy.

He ignored him, choosing instead to wallow in the circulatory thoughts of self-hatred and misery he’d been occupying these never-ending days with.

It was only when he smelled a new, strong scent, a citrusy perfume, and felt the vibrations which meant someone was coming towards him, that he picked his head up, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

He could feel the person watching him intently and he didn’t like the sensation at all. He shifted his position so that he could cross his arms over his chest comfortably.

Who was the new person? A visitor? Unlikely. It was obvious no one cared to see him. Even Potter hadn’t come back. Way to show some appreciation. Some Healer come to poke and prod him to check how he was doing? More likely, but also annoying, because Healers had no sense of personal space.

The person, though, seemed in no hurry to approach him.

Maybe it was a visitor…?

He quickly squashed the tiny bubble of hope that had risen up at the thought.

They probably just didn’t want to startle him by suddenly touching him. Or they were talking to his Healer. It was just as plausible.

He kept his head facing towards the source of the perfume.

He couldn’t stare them down anymore, but he could unsettle them.

He couldn’t be sure how much time had passed before he grew bored and picked up his leg again, keeping his arms crossed over his chest.

Another infuriating thing about his predicament was that he had no way of measuring time. It could have been months or years after the war and he had no clue. He had no idea how long he’d been awake either. It could have been days, weeks or months for all he knew. His schedule relied on his Healer, and that wasn’t a very reliable time source either, since he knew Healers worked at all hours of the day, and his seemed intent on seeing him as little as possible.

Not that he blamed him. Everyone else seemed to share the same sentiment.

He noticed the air pressure change again, signaling someone had left the room and closed the door, but he still smelled the perfume. In fact, it seemed to be even stronger, as if the person had moved closer.

Confused, he put his leg down again, and straightened up a little.

His heart was beating betrayingly fast. Maybe it was a visitor? But who would bother to come see him? What was the point, when he had no way of communicating with them anyway?

He nearly fell off his chair.

The person had touched his shoulder.

He couldn’t stand not knowing when someone was going to touch him. He hated being touched as a general rule, but with no warning it was infinitely worse.

That was one of the many reasons he detested the Healers’ poking and prodding.

The person did it again, this time tugging his hand away from its cradle in the crook of his elbow. If the perfume hadn’t been a sure sign, then the small, dainty hand that held his told him this was definitely a woman, and a small one at that.

He thought of pulling away, but his curiosity won out.

The woman placed something onto his hand. It felt like a wooden letter.

His eyes widened involuntarily, as his fingers quickly figured out the shape.

It was an A.

The woman took back the wooden A, then took his other hand and pressed his right forefinger to his left thumb.

A.

In sign language. He’d memorized the alphabet once, when Minerva had told him they’d have a student that year who was deaf. It had turned out that the student didn’t need it, and his mind had sifted out the information, clearing room for more relevant matters, but now there was nothing more relevant than this.

The woman put another wooden letter into his hand. B. Then she curled his hands into the shape of a sideways eight.

B.

It was slowly coming back now.

He held up his fingers in the shape of a C.

The woman put his hand to her cheek and nodded.

C.

He had no idea who she was, but for the first time in decades he felt the urge to give her a suffocating hug.

Maybe someone did care after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where I ended it for the fest. I may write a chapter or 2 more. :)


End file.
